It’s very exciting to win a job or sell a product. The sale signifies that the customer believes in you. It’s especially gratifying when the sale is associated with a new customer, because that broadens your client base. Making sales and having a broad base of customers is a good way to “keep the pipelines” filled with work and revenue, even in the face of marketplace perturbations.
One of the keys to keeping the pipelines filled and enjoying a prolonged “feast” is to think in terms of series when it comes to sales. Let me suggest that the most important job you have is to work towards the sales that are yet to be made, but are waiting there for you to simply “connect the dots.” In other words, always have a focus on upcoming opportunities, and create them with an eye towards serializing your efforts. Let me give you a couple of examples from my experience.
Writing and Selling a Book
An individual who wrote an Ebook was selling it on their website and had an aggressive sales campaign in the works. Part of the sales campaign caught my eye, and I ended up reviewing the book in anticipation of becoming involved in promoting and selling it. The book was in three distinct sections, each one addressed a relatively complex subject. The writing was satisfactory, there were lots of photos and graphics, and the price was right. But, there was much more information that could have been added to the first section of the book to make it comprehensive and worthwhile. It seemed clear to me that anyone who purchased the Ebook would be quite disappointed as the average reader would be looking for this missing information as a natural complement to what was already written.
From a series of sales perspective, the book could have been created in three standalone parts, thus allowing the author better focus when creating each section as a standalone book, and allowing customers to buy any one part in the series. Three books would have provided more opportunities to meet the needs of prospective customers, and a sale of any one of the books in the series could lead to follow-on sales in the series.
It’s possible that the book might sell hundreds of copies as-is, but each buyer will likely be sorely disappointed with the first section, and would never buy again from that author. My take on this is simply that the author was so fixated on making the first sale, that the potential for a series of sales wasn’t given adequate consideration. Updated editions, new Ebooks, seminars, training, paid subscriptions to a newsletter or website, and other related sales activities will never see the light of day because there likely won’t be any satisfied customers interested in anything else that might be offered in the series.
Professional Services
Years ago I hired a couple of competitor employees as part of my consulting team because I had an over-full pipeline of work. To facilitate “technology transfer” to my staff, and help ensure that projects got off to a good start, I made it a practice to always be with the project team when we started a job for a new customer. This also gave me an opportunity to get to know our customers and their needs through direct interactions.
While driving to our first meeting with a new customer, I went over some of the activities for the kick-off meeting, and mentioned three major activities that we needed to get involved in during our first few days on the job. My new employees were taken aback a bit and mentioned that some of the activities were out of scope. Indeed they were. After confirming our official scope of work, I reminded them that we’re always looking for related work that we can propose as part of a series of tasks to help our client and keep our pipeline filled.
They looked at me a bit astonished, and remarked that we hadn’t even started the job, and yet I was already working on the next several scopes of work. I confirmed that they had assessed the situation correctly, and then inquired as to how they used to do it at their former company. It was just as I had suspected – they worked a job to completion and then went looking for more work. I suggested that the “feast or famine” rollercoaster of billable work at their previous employer was probably one of the reasons that company was their former employer.
Putting it All Together
Getting in the door with a new customer is difficult. Once you’re in place, it should be much easier to make additional sales simply because your talent is known, and you have greater insight as to what your customer might need. Make good use of that valuable information by planning your sales as a series of efforts that naturally follow or are otherwise related to one another.
When you think in terms of an entire series of sales related to a particular product or service, you’ll be better able to see the true value in your work. This will also help you decide how best to sequence your work, and create spin-off work that makes use of your previous efforts. All of this will help you identify more sales to keep filling the pipeline. When we think in terms of a series of sales, we’re making good use of our customer base, and we’re creating future sales based on proven performance and knowledge of what our customers might be interested in next.
About the Author:
Clair Schwan writes www.Sensible-Small-Business-Ideas.com to help encourage others to own and operate their own enterprise as a way of enhancing their success in the world of business. Regardless of how much you feel a part of your company as an employee, he knows that the only business you’ll really ever be part of is your own.
